So how, exactly, does an idea turn into a company? This is the road block that many entrepreneurs find themselves at when building their seedling ideas into profitable startups. Of course there are numerous prominent and successful startups that were born overnight. However, the problem for the average human being is that they cannot afford the time that it takes to guarantee success, and/or they lack the full range of skills necessary to build the startup entirely on their own — much less overnight.

The truth of the matter is that there is no possible way to establish a strong foundation for your new startup without a serious time commitment. Time, in and of itself, is most often one of the primary reasons that many entrepreneurs and startup enthusiasts experience complication in the execution of the necessary planning stages of idea discovery. A lack of time and planning in the initial phases of this tedious process can often spillover into the actual development and long-term establishment of a new startup.

Participants at an "Idea Accelerator" pitch their initial ideas

Let’s face it: we’re all busy and things in this day and age move at a very high speed- and they’re only getting faster. Without the personal time and work commitment necessary for having a systematic and well-planned approach to the many “idea-to-seed funding” stages of building out your plan of action, you could easily see a great idea fall through.

Citizen Space recently had the great pleasure of hosting Startup Monthly‘s IceBreaker 3.0, which is was the third iteration of their Idea Accelerator program. The beauty of hosting events such as this in our SoMa #coworkingspace is that the transformation of office space by day to startup incubator activities in the evenings (and on weekends!) allows our members to participate in these types of networking and team building opportunities, with the option for doing so being literally right at their doorstep.

The purpose of these types of events is to have seamless collaboration between people that might not have otherwise met at all. It is in this type of environment that much of the discovery, planning, and development of new ideas takes place. Having both seen and facilitated the growth of brand new ideas into concepts and eventually startups in our space, we have learned the ins-and-outs of the crucial milestones that must be incorporated into the development process of new ideas, and can summarize success for many by one simple thing: teamwork.

Having said over and over again that time and commitment are crucial in the beginning stages of implementing your new idea, it is likely a very difficult thing to do it all quickly enough to keep up with the rapid development of new technology. Many entrepreneurs moonlight with their ideas, and exhaust themselves with trying to do it all on their own- even to the extent of taking on the self-teaching method to very difficult, complex coding languages.

Team Building is Essential to Creating a Successful Pitch

While this is definitely feasible for some people to do, the easier and more well-rounded option in this case is to build and foster relationships with other people who can bring something to the table as a technical, marketing, or business co-founder. Lessening the workload on each person by working with others in the teamwork approach not only increases the technical resources that the idea will have to build upon in it’s early stages, but will also decrease the amount of total time that it takes to pitch your idea to investors for seed funding.

It is important to also remember that as you build a team around your idea, it might not always be the “best” one. Having a team brainstorm together and build upon an idea can often lead to the development of brand new, even better ideas- and this is what we see often, particularly at events such as the IceBreaker 3.0.

So, when you’re at the point that you’re ready to move forward with seeing your idea come to life, remember this Japanese proverb: “None of us are as smart as all of us.”

Citizen Space is the world’s first coworking space, located at 425 2nd Street in the SoMa district of San Francisco. The idea of Citizen Space is to take the best elements of a coffee shop (social, energetic, creative) and the best elements of a workspace (productive, functional), and combine them to give indie workers the chance to have their own, affordable office space. Citizen Space was built on the coworking philosophy. Our residents (past and present) range from: software engineers, web developers, social media consultants/strategists, graphic designers, product designers, public relations specialists, and sustainable web hosting entrepreneurs. Check us out today!